Scarsdale's Staging of 'Edwin Drood' Discovers Local Talent

By ROBERTA HERSHENSON

Published: July 30, 1989

Correction Appended

SCARSDALE—
WHEN Anthony Ross, the director of the Scarsdale Summer Music Theater, chose ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' for this summer's student production, he did not know that the playwright lived in Scarsdale. Rupert Holmes himself, his mind on the coming Broadway opening of his new play, ''Accomplice,'' was unaware of the summer theater's plans. It was the kind of serendipity befitting a writer who lets each Drood audience vote on how to end the play.

''The Mystery of Edwin Drood,'' for which Mr. Holms wrote the script and the music, won five Tony Awards, including one for best Broadway musical of 1986. Mr. Holmes became the first person ever to win simultaneous Tonys for best book and best score. The play, Mr. Holmes's first, was originally presented in 1985 by Joseph Papp as a New York Shakespeare Festival production. 325 Companies Have Staged 'Drood'

''Drood'' has been staged by 325 companies nationwide and in London, but Mr. Holmes recently remarked to Mr. Ross that this was the ''closest'' he had ever been to a production. He meant this literally as he stepped over the lumber being sawed on the stage of the Heathcote Elementary School. Mr. Holmes was on the scene to address the play's young cast and crew, high school and college students who are spending six weeks participating in all aspects of theatrical production. The 21-year-old summer music theater is known for the professional quality of its shows.

Opening night on Aug. 3 was two weeks away. The young people - most of them Scarsdale residents - were abuzz when they learned that the playwright would be speaking to them. He had remained in the background until then, offering his help but sensitive to the need for the group to ''own'' its production.

The students clustered in the gym, quite at ease with their casually dressed, 42-year-old neighbor. Mr. Holmes urged the young people to look into themselves for an understanding of their characters, who are members of a turn-of-the-century theatrical troupe in England. The troupe - called the Music Hall Royale - is performing a play within the play: ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' based on an unfinished story by Charles Dickens.

Drood is about the love of acting and the theater, Mr. Holmes explained to the group. ''It is as much about the joy of putting on a show, of being allowed to perform for an audience, as it is about the mystery of who killed Edwin Drood,'' he said. Each Audience Is Unique

''What gave you the idea to write the play?'' a boy asked. Mr. Holmes answered that he had always loved an ''unsolved'' mystery and that he had hated it ''when they found the Titanic.'' He loves the sense of live theater, he added, and had wanted to create something that would make each audience feel unique.

Ad libs are written into ''Drood'' to lend it a sense of spontaneity. ''I thought if you could build that sense - that it's all happening at that moment - into the show on a nightly basis, you would make each audience feel special and different,'' the playwright explained.

Each audience lends its special touch to ''Drood'' by voting on the murderer's identity as well as on several other issues. Mr. Holms wrote 400 combinations of endings for the show, and the summer theater cast will be prepared for all of them.

''When are you coming to see the play?'' a girl asked in a worried tone, making some people laugh. Never the Second Night

''I'll talk to Tony and Fred (Mr. Ross and Frederick Willard, the show's music director) to see what makes you most comfortable,'' the playwright said. ''If it makes you too nervous, I won't come opening night.''

''I'll never come the second night,'' he added. ''The worst night of the show is always the second night.''

Mr. Holmes gave encouragement to the understudies, some of whom will perform several times during the show's 10-day run. ''All who understudied on Broadway in 'Drood' went on to wonderful parts in other shows,'' he said. He pointed out to those whose parts were small that ''no one in the show is ever off stage. The odds are that every second someone in the audience is looking right at you.''

''What he said was very enlightening,'' said Lauren Bumby , who plays Edwin Drood as well as Alice Nutting, an actress. (Women played men's roles in the English music hall tradition.) ''It was encouraging that he wouldn't tell us what our characters should be like - that we should give them our own interpretation,'' Ms. Bumby added.

Mr. Holmes writes, usually in the early-morning hours, in the home he shares with Liza, his wife of 20 years, and their two young sons, Nicholas, 2 years old; and Timothy, 9 months. The family moved to Scarsdale from Tenafly, N.J., three years ago after the death of a daughter, Wendy, 10, from a brain tumor. Her death - which occurred during the Broadway run of ''Drood'' - is the dark side of Mr. Holmes's extraordinary success story.

Mr. Holmes still seemed amazed as he described the telphone call from Barbra Streisand that sent his songwriting career into the stratosphere. Ms. Streisand had heard Mr. Holmes's first album and ''became an evangelist on my behalf in 1975.'' Songs for 'A Star Is Born'

Correction: August 6, 1989, Sunday, Late Edition - Final An article last Sunday about the playwright Rupert Holmes included an erroneous quotation. Mr. Holmes said his aim in ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' had been to ''make fun'' what had been a ''dark and somber book.'' He did not say he intended to make fun of the Dickens work.